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I miss my grandmother. She brings tears to my eyes when I think back on our time together. She would’ve turned 98 last weekend. And while she lived a good, long life, she’s been dead for about eight years.

Sometimes I wonder what she’d say to me — what she’d think of my academic endeavors, writing, friends, and loves.

Would she be proud of her grandson? Would I be living up to her expectations? Would she understand how much I miss her?

There are times when I stare at an old photo of the two of us. There she is, in her pearl earrings — a gem from another generation. She was a product of a time when women demanded civil liberties and spoke out bravely. Individually, she was highly educated, musically gifted, crafted an alarmingly kind, talented group of friends. She attracted her equals. I admired her.

But now, as I reflect on these eight years, I long for a video, text, or email between us. Something I can click play on.

There is nothing. I can’t find any artifact nor proof of our love and affection — our bond. We only have a handful of progressively fading photographs. Burned, stained from the sun, time is making us increasingly more sepia and prone to rosy retrospection.

Towards the latter years of her life, I grabbed whatever technology I had — at the time, a Motorola Razr — and pointed the “camera” her way. She didn’t mind my intrusion. She didn’t “get” that there was a video camera on the phone. I held it up as she talked to one of her dear friends.

She was talking about me and said into the phone, “Yes, Sam’s going to Colorado University.” I chimed in, like I always had to as her memory waned, “No Francie, Colorado State University.” She quickly relayed that correction.

A few more seconds passed and I turned off the camera. Somehow I knew this would be one of the most important, last moments with her. Her hospice treatments had accelerated. She was becoming weaker, but her hands gripped firm with mine until the end. She’d pass away shortly after this call.

To have that file meant the video was mine. I’d have it as long as I’d like it. A rare glimpse, however distorted and pixelated that would take me back.

Her voice. Her demeanor. Her playfulness. For a few seconds.

It’d have to do. There wasn’t much else to cling and hold.

Maybe it was her birthday, or maybe it was my addiction to nostalgia; whatever it was, I looked for the clip the other day. I desperately wanted to relive it. To touch through time. To bridge the gap between life and death. To see the pixels dance before my eyes and make me feel… there.

Amidst gigabytes of photos and videos on my computer, the little clip was gone. I rummaged through flash drives, hard drives, cloud storage — nothing. There was no file to be found.

It was a foreign feeling — loss — amidst this digital era. We live in a time of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, iMessage, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Gmail, Google Drive, iCloud, and Dropbox. Data costs little to nothing. And the world seems settled on one major goal: saving and storing your life for eternity.

Today, it’s not uncommon for me to send hundreds of texts, emails, and tweets in a day between friends and family — many of which include photos and videos.

I’m curious what Francie would think of these advancements. As I get older, the data seems to have a redundancy and staying power — beyond anything we could’ve imagined 10 years ago. She died before we started speaking to our phones, searching for rashes on WebMD, and sharing our meals over Facebook.

A file created today may well live beyond my lifetime, and maybe even my children’s (if I’m lucky enough to have them some day). What of these things would be passed onto future generations?

There’s that photo of me crossing the marathon finish line in Houston. There’s that kiss with my love in Colombia. There’s that random photo of my cousin and I when we were four years old — grinning from ear to ear. There’s that video tour of my old, Siberian-prison inspired apartment.

They’ll outlive me.

Storage is becoming cheaper every day. Companies are propositioning themselves to be the keeper of all your photos and videos, forever — just look at Google Photos. They’re saying they have the ultimate solution. Unlike my missing video of Francie, photos and videos are now saved and backed up; then, replicated across data centers across the globe. No flood, tornado, earthquake, hurricane, or mudslide can touch these memories. No user or device error can stop us now.

Maybe she belongs in the past, but she’d be here so much more amidst this technology. I could share a video of Francie to my partner. And I could connect with the memories that my mind slowly lets drift. Nothing would pass the intense scrutiny and analysis of today’s servers. The computers might serve the memories to me when I needed them most.

But what happens now? What will happen to our memories as they pass from generation to generation in this increasingly connected and backed up society? What will companies keep of us? What will our loved ones hold on to? What will they look to for connection with their pasts?

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My first year of writing is nearly complete. In starting my own online site and business, I realized a few entrepreneurial secrets that aided in the success and development of Frugaling.org. Hopefully, some of these ideas inspire you to make more and take advantage of any downtime you have to achieve your own entrepreneurial dreams!

A fun alternative to a temp job

Finding time for extra income opportunities was daunting last year. I wanted to make and save more money to pay off an overwhelming amount of student loans. I was rapidly approaching $40,000 in total debt last May. I thought about getting a menial job that paid me about $8 an hour after taxes. I scoured Craigslist for random temp jobs, but grew hopeless as the opportunities didn’t often fit within the parameters of my challenging semesters. The debt was unmanageable.

Sometime in mid-July, Frugaling.org became a real second income for me. My advertising revenue and traffic skyrocketed. I felt a rush when I published articles that would get read by 10, 100, 1000, and eventually by up to 10,000+ people at a time. But the excitement was heightened because I knew this would perfectly sync with my busy graduate student schedule.

You make your own schedule

Here and there, I began to work on the site. I’d type a story between classes or when I finished work for the night. In a fleet of passion through my fingers, I’d hammer out intricate articles that were entirely my own desire. As much as I wanted to share my voice with others, I was writing for my own growth, too.

Unlike the Craigslist opportunities or strange side jobs around my college campus, writing online and becoming entrepreneurial allowed me even greater freedom in money-making endeavors. It was far easier to squeeze an hour of work where I could fit it, then worry about someone else’s overlapping or differing schedule. Frankly, it was empowering.

Entrepreneurial success is often predicated on fall back options

Graduate school, work, and my other job account for about 60 to 70 hours of work per week. At times, it was hard to digest how many hours were dedicated to my education. Until this academic year, I considered myself to be lazy. I didn’t want to work all that hard and found any opportunity to waste time.

By creating an outlet for my thoughts and conveniently forming it around my schedule, I kept my prior obligations while starting a new project. My grades and school experience hardly changed; actually, I was more diversified and felt grounded in life because of my entrepreneurial spirit.

Starting a business takes a certain gusto and risk, but having options helped insure against failure. If Frugaling didn’t work out, that would be okay. This wasn’t the only business venture going for me, and I wasn’t putting all my eggs in one basket. The failure of this would simply be a drop in the larger bucket.

Follow these examples to find your own achievement

I’m not alone in starting a business while staying busy. There are a tremendous number of tech titans that took to something on the side, and it turned into their main income. Here are two examples:

Drew Houston, CEO of Dropbox

Houston was searching for a method to avoid the constant need for a flash drive. As a graduate student at MIT, he coded a rough basis for Dropbox.com. Basically, it would allow users to place a file online, and have access anywhere in the world to that same file, as long as there was Internet. Houston met his business partner at MIT and launched the company with the safety net of getting a masters degree from a top-tier institution with massive social connections. If Dropbox had failed, he would still be hirable at some terrific institutions. If it succeeded, he would get the best of both worlds.

Mark Zuckerburg, CEO of Facebook

Zuckerburg’s story is legendary now. Through a series of startups and ideas, Mark created a site that was exclusively for Harvard students. It was originally entitled, “The Facebook.” This elite establishment became the perfect territory to foment incredible demand. From there, Zuckerburg and his partners slowly spread the idea from university to university. The elite model appealed to a variety of people, but if it had failed, he would still be getting a Harvard degree.